7 Must-Read Stats from The State of Software Development Report 2017

It would take long to count the possible challenges startups are facing.

Startups need to act fast, learn fast and be as flexible as possible to survive and grow. But tackling business challenges is not the only difficulty startups have to overcome.

I used to work for a startup as a marketer, entertaining myself mostly with business-related challenges but working closely with tech people. I sensed the feeling of creating a product that serves high-demand business needs.

Needless to say, there was huge pressure on the software teams.

It was difficult to keep up with the technological changes, learn new technologies and apply new tools, manage software development, create roadmaps and estimate project length.

Tackling capacity issues and finding the most effective ways to ship the product people are looking for was also a challenge while building teams that were able to achieve that.

With this state of software development report, we want to shed light on how startups actually do it.

This is the first time we have published this report, and this is the first report focusing on software development at startup companies. We’re bringing some exciting new data, and we won’t stop here.

We’re planning to publish this report every year to see how trends are changing and how the startup ecosystem is evolving.

This post highlights 7 interesting stats from the report. The full state of startup software report contains even more fascinating insights about today's software development landscape at startup companies. Download the full study to discover:

The #1 challenge startup software teams face

The #1 priority software teams are tackling

The most widely used agile methods by startups

Acceptance of remote work

The most popular programming languages and new ones startups are planning to use in the next 12 month

In our report, we wanted to know the biggest challenges tech teams are facing in a startup. It turned out one of the biggest challenges with a 25% share is prioritizing development. But there are many more; check out the other challenges in the full report.

In the report, we also asked what have they done to overcome this challenge. Based on their answers, the number one way to handle prioritization challenges is by listening to potential usersand existing customers (by doing interviews and conducting surveys).

Also, hiring a dedicated product manager or spending more time on product management is a way out from this challenge.

Startups can’t really avoid using tools for project management, team communication, software testing and version control. The report revealed what portion of startups use these tools, what are the most popular ones and what factors are limiting them from using one.

We know that smooth communication is essential to make the project efficient and eventually successful. Tech teams must apply methods that give a communication frame for the project (daily standup meetings, weekly meetings, etc.).

Tools are essential to support every kind of team communication. The report revealed that 85.71% of startups use Slack as a tool to communicate during the project; the second-most used tool is email (66.67%); the third is Google Hangouts (38.10%).

Outsourcing software development is a way to handle capacity issues. It turned out that 56.3% of startups have already outsourced software development to an external partner (freelancer, software development company).

We fielded an online survey from February 2017 until March 2017. The survey was available in English and consisted of 45 questions. The responses were sourced via email invitations, partnering with other companies, social sharing and community promotions.

No personal information was collected within the survey and books were offered for responses as incentives.

We asked 126 tech people working for startups about software development. This chapter provides more info about who they are, what company they work for and where they’re based.